tarted life
together--as he put it--he talked a little more.

His name is Pettis. Six months after I learn that, I get his first
name. It's Rabelais, and I could see why he doesn't like it. But when
he breaks down and tells me, he gets real bold and says:

"And what's yours, my male Hebe?"

"Mike Murphy."

"Naturally," he said. He laughs. It is the only time I hear him laugh
in thirty-one years. I can't see anything funny.

He is a draftsman for those old skinflints Cartner and Dillson. When
they die, their sons take over and are even worse. In the depression,
Pettis gets a little shabby but he always has the price of a glass of
beer. In '53 he's at the same desk and doing the same job he started
on in '22.

In '35 he gets married. He tells me so. Tasting his beer, he says,
"I'll be married this time tomorrow." I often wonder what his wife
looks like but I never see her. Not even when it gets decent for
ladies to come in, she never shows. Marriage doesn't seem to change
him; he never looks happier or less shabby or less browbeat.

In '42 I heard his first complaint. By then we're both getting into
our forties and, what with his lack of size and caved-in chest and my
insides all busted up from pre-World War I football, the army doesn't
want us. So he never misses a day except on his vacation.

He says, "I can't get raw materials." About three months later, I
understand what he means when he says, "My hobby is inventing."

In '45 I ask him, "What do you invent?"

It takes him two years to decide to tell me. By now we are pretty good
pals. He never tells anyone else that I know of. He says, "I invent
machines. Super machines."

In '48 he says, "But they don't work. Someday...."

* * * * *

And in '53, on the day of our thirty-first anniversary, you might say,
he comes in and things are different. All different. I can feel it
when he opens the door and comes in at five-o-nine instead of
five-ten. There is plenty more different, too. He walks up to the bar
like it's his and roars:

"Two beers, Mike!"

I drop a glass I'm so surprised, but I give him two beers like he
wants. He gulps them both down, puts a foot on the rail and looks me
straight in the eye. His eyes are a sort of washed blue. I've never
noticed them before.

"Beer for the house!" he yells at me.

"Take it easy, Mr. Pettis," I says.

"Easy, hell!" he shouts and slaps a roll as big as his hand on the
bar. "A